ABSTRACT

When he was eighteen, Henri de Rothschild wrote a short Whiggish essay (dedicated to his mother) intended for all the ladies engaged in charity who enjoyed being members of patriotic and national organizations such as the Œuvres de l’Union des Femmes de France and the Red Cross.2 In stating a number of truisms on charity and in exhuming some historical (more or less) facts about medical care, Henri gave us some insight into the genesis of his own career in medical charity. His explanation of the charitable impulse assumed that the divine hand had encoded the golden rule in the human heart. What would happen to humanity if there were not people who would help the unfortunate and the sick? With all the poverty, suffering, unhappiness, illness, and moral corruption in the world, high-minded people like his mother would always be able to satisfy their desire to do good.